Ode to Anime Studios – C-Station

Gotta shine that spotlight on lesser-known studios every once in a while… C-Station is one of those studios that doesn’t really hold that many credits to its name – its most popular show ever is this season’s YuruCamp (Seasonal Prattle 2018), and that goes for me as well because StarMyu is still on my plan...

We All Have Our Quirks, But Maybe They’re Not These…

Even though Boku no Hero Academia has the superpowers known as Quirks (kosei), there’s something very group-oriented about it… I was reading an academic piece on how Japanese people are taught from youth about how to distinguish between different social groups and categories in general (often broadly put into the distinction of “inside” - uchi...

Must-read Monthly Monday (March 2018 ed.)

Another great month in the aniblogging community just happened. Let's see what we've got... If it's not specified, the time period covered in this post is from the 19th of February 2018 to today (26th March 2018). Navigation: Other People's Reads | Spellbook Offerings | Coming up next... Other People's Reads It wouldn't be a round-up post...

Spring 2018 Predictions

Here we go again... The bold titles are accessible to me (or will be soon) through Funiroll or other legal means, while the underlined titles are part of the resolution to "vary my genres". (Of course, this is only what I know as of this post. The special debut of Mahou Shoujo Ore made me push...

Winter 2018 Wrap-up

Let's wrap this up. For some reason, my "seasonal rankings" tag became a "seasonal wrap-up" somewhere along the way, so that's the new tag for the final takes on the season. Also, due to the special debut Crunchyroll are doing with Mahou Shoujo Ore, I had to get these posts out about a week or...

What if the Moon Fell Into the Sea?

I stumbled across something extraordinary one day while wandering through Anime News Network… …there’s this 19-minute movie called The Moon That Fell Into the Sea (Umi ni Ochita Tsuki no Hanashi), directed…and almost everything else…by a guy called Akira Oda. It won the 2014 Noburo Oofuji Award, which is how I found out about it....

Reinforcing and Breaking Gender Roles in Gakuen Babysitters

Gakuen Babysitters may be part drama, part comedy and part “aww” factor, but it still manages to point out social issues along the way. In episode 10 of Gakuen Babysitters, Kumatsuka-sensei asks Ryuichi, Hayato and Usaida to dress in drag (i.e. wear wigs and pretend they’re girls) for her husband, who’s protective of his little...

Out of Print: Why We Anime and Manga Fans Can’t Have Nice Things

The "nice things" in question are English-language print magazines dedicated to the hobby...that makes the title extremely awkward, though... As I stood around at one of my local anime retailers about a month ago, I spotted some catalogues and music magazines sitting on a shelf with “Free! Please take one!” above it. I flipped through...

A Walk Through the Park (Vers. 2)

We're back with Setsuna and co.! Just as a recap... This is part of a writing collab between a few of us anibloggers, with the shared theme of "couple" and "park". Irina's psychological story Keiko's SoL AstralGemini's ecchi (!!!) ...and Plyasm's mystery At first I spun and got "samurai", then I rerolled to get "harem"....

A Walk Through the Park (Vers. 1)

A few spins of the random number generator later, here we are... This is part of a writing collab between a few of us anibloggers, with the shared theme of "couple" and "park". Irina's psychological story Keiko's SoL AstralGemini's ecchi (!!!) ...and Plyasm's mystery At first I spun and got "samurai", then I rerolled to...